Trivandrum: The Education Department of Government of Kerala today announced the holistic intervention of ICT-assisted education to its 9,279 schools, from Class 1 to 7 in the State, through [email protected] Project in the next academic year starting from June 01, 2017. Minister for Education, Prof. C Raveendranath, rolled out this initiative today in Thiruvananthapuram.

Kerala, being a role-model in ICT enabled education, has started IT education under [email protected] Project for High School classes (Std 8 to 10) in early 2005. It has now being scaled up to the Lower Primary and Upper Primary sections, thus enabling ICT enabled education right through Std 1 to 12.

The Minister launched ‘e @ Vidhya’, the new ICT textbook for Std 5 to 7 and Operating System & Resource DVD for primary schools, developed by [email protected] The declaration on completion of broadband internet connectivity to all these schools was also held.

“The scaling up of ICT-enabled education in UP classrooms is a major step in achieving the educational goal of the Govt with respect to its General Education Rejuvenation Mission. Computer Labs and Smart Classrooms would be set-up in all LP & UP schools”, said the Minister.

“[email protected] has already imparted specific ICT training for 70,602l LP & UP teachers in the State and we have roped in BSNL for providing broadband connectivity to all LP & UP schools in the State and as on date as many as 8,918 LP&UP schools (97%) schools have been fully covered”, said K Anvar Sadath, Executive Director of [email protected] project.

All contents in the new ICT textbook ‘[email protected]’ textbook are prepared entirely using Free and Open Source Software. Each school would also be provided with a DVD that contains the software packages which would assist in learning the ICT enabled contents in the textbook.

‘e @ Vidhya’ contains activities based on Language, Basics of Science, Social Studies and Mathematics in a total of 9 chapters. Sub-activities include picturization of poem (K-Paint software), View on Eclipses & Stars (Stellarium), introduction to fission (J-Fraction lab, fraction-matcher), Preparing Notice and Posters (Libre Office writer), Mathematical flower decoration (Geogebra), Locating and Identifying States and Capitals in the Map (K-Geography), dimension-specific activities to learn area and volume (Area builder), Audio editing tools such as Odacity, educational applications such as Turtle Art, Web browser, and Libre Office Impress etc.